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Dessert

Boiled Lemon Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, sugar, flour, lemon peel and juice, eggs, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather the ingredients: half a cupful chopped suet, one pint bread crumbs, one lemon, one cupful sugar, one cupful flour, a teaspoonful salt, two eggs, and milk.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, and flour together, adding the grated lemon peel and strained lemon juice.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the eggs and enough milk to reach a thick batter consistency.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered mold and boil for three and a half hours.

  2. Turn the pudding out, sprinkle sifted sugar over it, and serve warm with lemon sauce if desired.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

594Calories
20 gProtein
7 gFat
112 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up moisture from the eggs and milk.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
Flour (in the method)
Adds starch that thickens the batter and firms the pudding's texture.
Lemon
Its peel and juice add aroma and acidity that brighten the sweet, rich batter.

The step that matters

Moistening to a thick batter. The eggs and milk must hydrate the crumbs and flour enough to hold together. A batter that is too thin gives a loose, soggy pudding, while one that is too stiff stays dense and dry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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